Dying
by Butterflygirl113
Summary: Lister is dying. (Yes, it's depressing, but it's good.)


AUTHOR'S NOTE: I wrote this two years ago as a form of catharsis while taking care of my dying grandmother. It is therefore very sad. I always thought I'd edit it to be a bit tighter, but the anniversary of her death was a few days ago, so I figured what better time to post it than now? Despite the sadness, it is probably my best work. I hope you enjoy it.

* * *

The medibay door whooshed somberly open, everything about the aging ship seeming to mirror the occupant's physical status: old, silent, and crumbling to dust. Machinery beeped endlessly, mournful and reassuring. _Beep... beep... beep..._ Each one a reminder of the end to come, and each one comforting the listener that it was _not yet._ Rimmer strode slowly into the room, head hanging in resigned concern.

"How is he?"

The sound echoed invasively in the quiet room, unwelcome in its disturbance. Kryten winced and frowned, lowering his eyes to the floor.

"Not well, I'm afraid, sir."

"How long?"

"Any time now."

Rimmer frowned, deep, unsatisfied lines forming between his brows.

"And there's nothing more we can do for him?"

Kryten turned away sadly.

"I'm afraid not, sir."

The hologram took that in with a slight nod, the troubled look never leaving his face. He moved to sit in the chair always left at Lister's bedside and sighed. He looked at the ancient and worn face for quite a while in silence. His mechanical, immortal eyes traced the lines of mortality printed onto his crewmate's face. So many wrinkles. So much white hair. So very, unexpectedly _old._

It wasn't his age that made it unexpected. Lister _was_ nearly two-hundred years old. It was the fact that this aging body had, for the most part, hidden the signs of time marching forward with the dazzling veneer of Lister's eternally youthful personality. There were times, yes, when age would get to him in the past, unsettling moments where mortality was suddenly and jarringly brought to the front of the others' minds as they watched him with concern, but usually he was able to brush them off, catch his breath, and distract them all from his increasing inability again. Those moments had become more frequent in the recent months, and though they had seen it coming, expected it even, it didn't make it any less shocking.

The fact that he was now permanently confined to a bed in the medibay, rarely if ever waking, stripped him of the false shine of inner vibrance and the others could see him as he really was. He was dying.

And Rimmer didn't know how he felt about that.

To be fair, examining his feelings had never been his strong suit. Years and decades and even a century of experiences together flowed into his mind in an increasingly tangled mesh, the jumbled wave washing over and confusing his senses. So many of a younger Lister, vibrant, energetic, and a real smegger, rose up from a mostly dormant part of his memory. It was so long ago... He had the sensation of mental dust falling away from the memories as he picked them up to examine them, the particles catching the meager light like a swarm of dimmed fireflies.

Lister had really been a smeghead then, hadn't he? Always teasing and provoking him. Funny how it didn't seem to matter now. Funny how he'd give almost anything to have just one of those days back.

Lister wheezed lightly, the whiffling inhalation of sleep a poor imitation of the room-rattling snores that used to torture the hologram. Still, Rimmer half-jumped out of the chair to see if he was OK, arrested by Kryten's somber yet assuring look. He sat back down.

As the years went on, they got a lot closer. Too much had happened, and they'd been there for each other for too long on their own not to learn to appreciate the other's strong suits. Teamwork and isolation eventually formed a bond deeper than the tentative, required association that defined their more immature days. The sniping lessened and transformed into something more friendly than acidic, a warmth and trust born of maturity making their days more pleasant than in the past.

Now he almost thought of him as a brother, certainly as a best friend. Not that he'd been exactly spoiled for choices. But still, Lister was loyal, and God-blasted-ly sensitive and caring, and eventually Rimmer'd learned to trust and let his defenses down a little at a time. He still remembered the confusion fraught with anxiety he'd experienced the first time he realized they might be becoming actual friends. He hadn't known _how_ to be friends, if he would mess it up or if Lister would get tired of him eventually and turn his back on him again. He wasn't entirely sure it wasn't a cruel joke in the making either. Yet Lister had been patient, and was now perhaps the person Rimmer cared for most in the universe.

And it was this friend that lay dying on the medi-bed before him.

He felt something constrict in his stomach and rise, serpent-like, to squeeze his throat. Tears stung at the back of his eyes and he blinked them back, Adams apple bobbing as he dry swallowed several times.

He had known pain. Pain defined most of his early and middle life. He was used to cruelty and disappointment and failure. He was used to bullying, both emotional and physical. …He had never experienced this sort of pain. This rose up from the deepest parts of him, strangling everything between his stomach and his head. It stabbed at his heart and made his eyes burn. It felt like some great, terrible cry was trying to force itself from his chest, tearing him apart or carrying him with it. It was... it was loss. It was mourning. It was a deep and crippling sadness over the loss of something he'd searched his whole life for, his holy grail: the one person who had ever truly come to care for him. He was losing the only family he'd ever had.

A strangled sound escaped his intense efforts to hold it in, and Kryten looked up at him from the equipment he was monitoring. Rimmer dropped his head. He covered his eyes with shaking hands and pressed them in hard. Who cared if he damaged something? He was a hologram. They could repair his eyes. They couldn't repair this. They couldn't repair the pain, the loss. They tried. They failed. They failed the man who always had a plan to fix things, or if he didn't have a plan, managed to stumble into one that worked anyway. They failed him. They couldn't save the man who always saved them-who always saved him.

"I'm sorry, Lister."

The whisper was broken and ragged, the harshness of air forced out in the moments before a person can no longer refrain from crying. He whimpered again, trying desperately to hold it in, but he let out another pained sound, and another, until his shoulders were shaking and his back heaving and he shook his head, hating himself for crying.

"It's OK, sir. Let it out," came a comforting voice, and Kryten, who had previously been across the room, rested a gentle hand on his shoulder.

Rimmer wailed. He clenched his hands into fists and grimaced through the emotional pain that was tearing through him.

"It's not _FAIR_, Kryten!" he yelled, fire burning in his eyes, pain molding the edges.

"I know, sir," Kryten nodded, plastic features forming an expression of deepest sympathy. "I know."

Rimmer broke down and sobbed, covering his eyes with his palms again, unashamed or unable to control the convulsions of his shoulders. Unable to care that much about something that trivial. Not now. Not anymore.

"It's not fair," he repeated brokenly, much quieter than before.

He looked back at the man sleeping in front of him. He seemed so frail and withered under the too-thin white sheet. It rose up and down slightly, rhythmically, as the monitors continued to beep. So old, so thin, so... not Lister. He was fading away, draining away from them and all they could do was watch... And wait.

Rimmer sat up straighter in his chair and rested a hand on Lister's lightly, contemplating his fingers as they tried to tighten around the gnarled and bony hand. Fingers that were too young and plump with simulated health compared to the others. He had to remind himself again, with bitter irony, that he was actually the older one.

Die young; live for eternity. Maybe Lister should have tried that, he thought. At least then, if he was a hologram, he wouldn't have to mourn him. Now he'd have to mourn him for as long as the machinery held out, supporting his projection. Centuries perhaps. Millennia. Endless, unsympathetic eternity pulling him farther and farther away from the only acceptance he had ever known.

Time was a cruel bastard.

Lister gasped and winced, writhing slightly in the bed as some spasm of pain overtook him. Rimmer jumped in horrified alarm as the beeping of the machinery sped up, then slowed back to a normal pace. Lister calmed, falling back into the sweet embrace of his endless sleep, the wince dissipating like fog on a clear night. The machine continued to beep steadily, and Kryten caught Rimmer's eye.

"It's alright, sir. Just a momentary spike in his heart rate. All read-outs say it's nothing to be concerned about."

The hologram looked shaken and not a bit sick as he sunk back down into the chair, grasping the edge of the bed for support. A long moment passed in silence.

"I think... I'll stay the night tonight, Kryten. You go get some down time. You've been at it for weeks straight, it seems like."

"Are you sure, Mr. Rimmer, sir?"

The mechanoid frowned, looking toward Lister and the machines, then at the weary hologram across from him.

"I'm sure, Kryten."

"Well... Perhaps I might, in a little while. I'll be back to join you shortly, sir."

"That's fine, Kryten," Rimmer said distantly, clearly distracted. He was looking at Lister's closed eyes.

After all, holograms didn't need to sleep, and he'd have plenty of time after...

But the machinery beeped constantly, soothingly.

Each beep saying _not yet._


End file.
